Right place to store the application data in IOS

Question

Currently i was saving my application data (Media) to the CacheDirectory i.e

/var/mobile/Applications/BEAFC76C-C450-4A3A-9765-A0385A9580F3/Li

Answer 1

Library/Application Support Folder is the folder you should be using.

This directory doesn't always exist, and thus you may need to create it. You can enable or disable whether you want to backup this data with iTunes or not.

This data is not accessible even if you enable file sharing. Only data that you put in Document directory would be shared with iTunes sharing, so you can still protect your data and get it backed up as well. Apple's documentation

Answer 2

Use Documents (NSDocumentDirectory) for files you wish to share via iTunes.

Use Application Support (NSApplicationSupportDirectory) for files you wish to hide from the user but still be backed up and never deleted by the OS.

Answer 3

Starting iOS 5, Apple says that it's no longer a good thing to save all kind of files in Documents Directory - if you do that, your app will be rejected for sure because this folder is backed up to iTunes & iCloud, unless otherwise specified.

It says that we should save files into Caches or Tmp Directory - these won't be backed up, but it's not a good thing to do because files from these directories can disappear if low memory happens.

So I think the best think to do is to save the important files that you need all the time in your app into Documents Directory and mark them not to be backed up, like this.